Heidi and Spencer and Bruno and Eminem: The big put-ons of the week

So as most of you thought, the whole Bruno-Eminem face-plant was a put-on to boost both men’s new projects, and we all got a good chuckle out of the whole thing. It followed a now-familiar kind of media script: A “spontaneous moment” became a “controversy” which became a “put-on.”

Less amusing is the Heidi and Spencer Pratt put-on over at I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! It’s not so much Heidi and Spencer themselves – we expect them to be phonies, right? – it’s more the way NBC is trying so hard to pump up this reality-game-show’s ratings.

Late yesterday afternoon, MSNBC.com reported that the head of NBC reality programming, Paul Telegdy, said the Pratts were “everything that’s wrong with America… insincere, lazy, entitled, and they claim the devil has possessed them.” (Personally, it lowers my opinion of Satan to think that he’d bother to latch onto those two souls, but anyway… )

Telegdy said in his statement that if and when H&S return to Celebrity, “their value system [will be] utterly deconstructed.” (“Deconstructed”? Uh oh: has some NBC exec been spending company-time reading his Jacques Derrida?) “These people are really going to bare their souls,” concluded Telegdy.